Dirty Laundry and The Servants
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Two collaborative works by Karen Schwenkmeyer & Lisa Mann

Dirty Laundry,  by Karen Schwenkmeyer and Lisa Mann (July 25 -August 17, 2025)
Commissioned by the Gamble House and supported in part by the Perenchio Foundation.  

​We are happy to announce “Dirty Laundry” – our new, site-specific, collaborative installation project at the historic Gamble House in Pasadena! The new works compliment the Gamble House’s special “Upstairs, Downstairs” tours running from July 25 - August 17, which offer visitors a rare opportunity to observe the lives and spaces of the people who worked in service of the Gamble family during the early 20th Century.  

Our “Dirty Laundry” works are interwoven throughout the “Upstairs, Downstairs” tour and feature our custom-designed linens, prints, sculpture, and more. These objects depict domestic servants, vintage Proctor & Gamble Ivory soap ads, lists of chores, and quotes by servants and writers from early 20th Century America.  

This installation continues the themes of our 2019 ArtNight Pasadena video installation, “The Servants,” (see below), a 20-minute video projected onto a screen on the sleeping porch of the Gamble House, featuring the artists as female domestic workers in silhouette as they went about cleaning, cooking, and laundering. 
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Like “The Servants,” “Dirty Laundry” invites reflection on the physical, psychological, and emotional toll of domestic work, as well as the class structures that sometimes rendered these women’s lives invisible. Many of these service roles were filled by immigrant women who came to America seeking democracy and opportunity, only to encounter the same rigid hierarchies they had hoped to escape from their home countries. The installation sheds light on their stories, offering a space for acknowledgment, empathy, and critical examination of labor, class, immigration, and gender.
Press for "Dirty Laundry":
"Greene Washed: Laundering Eye" Los Angeles Review of Architecture, Issue #2, Oct 9, 2025, by Renée Lynn Reizman. On Instagram: "Greene Washed: Laundering Eye" 
"Rare Look at Servant Life in 1900s" - LA Times Arts and Entertainment, 8/5/25 and LAT Essential Arts, 8/1/25, by Jessica Galt.
"The Forgotten Lives Behind Pasadena's 'Millionaires Row'"- Colorado Boulevard Newspaper 8/13/25, by Brian Biery
"Labor, Legacy and Laundry: Gamble House shines light on hidden histories"-Pasadena Weekly 7/10/25
The Servants,  by Karen Schwenkmeyer and Lisa Mann (October, 2019)
Presented by ArtNight Pasadena, City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs, at the Gamble House.
 
In The Servants, the collaborative team Schwenkmeyer & Mann explore the economic underpinnings that built the historic, 1909, Arts and Crafts masterpiece, the Gamble House, in Pasadena, California. ​The Gamble House was designed by architects Charles and Henry Greene to house two differing social classes.  The two live-in servants (a cook and a maid), as well as a gardener, chauffeur, and laundress, permitted the Gambles to devote their time to charities, leisure activities, and travel. This was a common arrangement in 1909. Most servants were immigrants coming from countries with a rigid class structure and ironically hoping to find new social freedom and opportunity here in America. It is these workers who have cared for and preserved the artistry of the Gamble House over the years. 
​The Gamble family inherited their wealth from the Procter & Gamble Company, whose most lucrative products were Ivory Snow detergent and Ivory Soap. The company pioneered innovative advertising techniques to promote their products and reach their target consumers, "housewives." They created daytime radio programs for housewives to tune in to hear the continuation of never-ending dramas, and interrupted them with soap commercials. Hence, the "soap opera" was born and profits soared.
With a desire to give voice to the under-represented, Schwenkmeyer and Mann projected the servants’ enacting household tasks on the sleeping porch. Their activities are occasionally interrupted by Procter & Gamble soap advertisements, as well as abstracted and animated architectural details of the Gamble House. On a separate screen, the artists projected quotes of American domestics voicing their feelings and experiences. These impressions (that do not derive specifically from Gamble House servants) are combined with Procter & Gamble print advertising. Underscoring these visuals is sound from Proctor and Gamble radio ads, soap operas, and popular music of the early 20th C., forming a cacophonous sonic backdrop.
Lisa Mann and Karen Schwenkmeyer have been collaborating intermittently since 1997 when they formed M.A.M.A. (Mother Artists Making Art).

​The Servants Credits:
Artists and Performers – Karen Schwenkmeyer and Lisa Mann
Videographer and Editor – Kathryn L. Beranich
Sound Designer and Technical Support – Googe
Projection Mapping Technical Support – Ana Carolina Estarita and  Ankita Panda
Production Assistant – Renee Rubalcava
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​"Delightful rear projection video "The Servants" created by Lisa Mann and Karen Schwenkmeyer entertained us as we waited to tour the Gamble House last night – part of the [semi-] annual ArtNight Pasadena. They mimed tasks and duties household servants of the early 1900s would perform. Images were projected from inside the second story windows, a witty take on silent era flicks." ~ Scarlet Cheng. @scarlet.oh Instagram.